12 ms·

Amazon duped millions of consumers into enrolling in Prime, US FTC says

299 points by testrun 3y ago

bArray 3y ago
As a UK-based Amazon customer, these dark patterns are getting out of control. They keep swapping interfaces every few days, and they are becoming increasingly complex. Now you have to de-select "use the remaining balance in my gift cards to pay for prime" every time you checkout. The you have to select a non-obvious button to not get fast delivery (otherwise enable prime). You then have to go through all of the orders in the checkout and ensure that the "free" option is selected. That, plus they keep pushing this subscription service for repeat purchases, meaning that can slowly creep the prices of everything up and not notify you. They also now display prices as if you are subscribed, not the actual one-off purchase.
valianteffort 3y ago
[flagged]
- cyanydeez 3y ago
  ....(citation needed)
- nl 3y ago
  > I was almost convinced they weren't looting the treasury blind. What does this even mean?
  - technothrasher 3y ago
    It's a standard right-wing talking point. It translates to: "the national debt is increasing and it is because of Biden and the Democrats with their unchecked spending." (Not that I agree with the above. I'm just translating what "looting the treasury" was supposed to mean in the post.)
    - blooalien 3y ago
      > It translates to: "the national debt is increasing and it is because of Biden and the Democrats with their unchecked spending." When the actual reality is that the vast majority of our "high-level" politicians these days (regardless of party) are absolutely guilty as sin of that very same "unchecked spending", where the only real difference is what personal or corporate agenda they choose to spend it on (at least that portion of it which escapes their own corrupt wallets, where a lot of it surely lands).
      - salad-tycoon 3y ago
        One of the things that bugs me most is that somehow “They” managed to squash the whole “we are the 99%” thing and replace it with “red hates blue and blue hates red, fight to the death you plebs.” Vitriol, save it for your masters. #wereallinthistogether or some such nonsense, right?
boomboomsubban 3y ago
Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713
slurpyb 3y ago
Last time i used Amazon, they dynamically altered the shipping costs to be just above the cost of a month of prime (which would give me free shipping). Whether it was because I was once a Prime member or not, it felt so slimey.
- whatever1 3y ago
  Or maybe the typical delivery cost is close to $10? USPS Retail Ground® is $9.
  - jeromegv 3y ago
    Rates amazon is getting are nowhere near the retail price.
    - viknesh 3y ago
      I'd guess that Amazon would pay not more than $5 if the address is in an urban or suburban area for them to have UPS ship the same package, and definitely less if they self-fulfill. Anecdotally I've heard that Amazon had UPS discounts that employees could use that gave almost half off.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - whatever1 3y ago
        The real question is why to pay $5 for a customer you likely will not see again ? If the item is expensive enough probably you can offset the cost, but if their basket is worth $10, it makes no sense to subsidize their $5 shipping. I am thinking of it from the perspective of an EBay seller.
selcuka 3y ago
Well, I tried it after reading the article, and currently it is very intuitive to cancel your Prime membership: - Clicked the "Hello, Your Account & Lists" button on the home page - Clicked the "Prime" button - There is a big link that says "Update, cancel, and more..." there The article says that they changed the UI in April. Maybe it was worse before.
- majormajor 3y ago
  And then how many more steps? (I don't want to cancel right now so I didn't go all the way through the flow, but saw at least two "are you sure" prompts in a row...)
  - selcuka 3y ago
    No idea, but at least it is easy to find it now. How many clicks it actually takes is largely irrelevant when we probably click thousands of times for much less trivial things every day.
- Prickle 3y ago
  > The lawsuit said that under substantial pressure from the FTC, Amazon changed its cancellation process in April but that "violations are ongoing" and that it still "requires five clicks on desktop and six on mobile for consumers to cancel from Amazon.com." They clearly state here, that it was significantly worse before. The suit can be seen here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520.1.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32... The lawsuit states: 114: "The Iliad Flow required consumers intending to cancel to navigate a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option cancellation process. In contrast, customers could enroll in Prime with one or two clicks." https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-ftc-probe-customer-complaints-sign-ups-internal-documents-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-ftc-probe-custo... https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-project-iliad-juiciest-highlights-ftc-prime-lawsuit-2023-6?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-project-iliad-juicies... > Amazon intentionally drew out the process of canceling a Prime membership under a project code-named "Iliad," according to internal documents obtained by Insider. Related stuff from the EU: > Amazon changed its process for canceling Prime subscriptions last summer after pressure from the European Commission and national consumer watchdogs. The company introduced a simplified two-click process. Article below has pictures from a previous EU case in 2022. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/5/23195019/amazon-prime-cancellation-europe-european-union-dark-patterns https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/5/23195019/amazon-prime-canc...
noman-land 3y ago
Amazon's dark patterns around cancelling Prime membership left such a disgusting taste in my mouth that I swore the company off. Nasty. This was some years ago but I decided it wasn't worth the cost for me so I went inside my settings to cancel. Their stipulations for cancelling the membership were "Come back 2 days before the account is set to auto-renew and cancel then." Excuse me? That was in like 6 months. Can't remove the credit card. Can't ask them to just stop auto charging. I set about 40 calendar reminders and cancelled at 12:01am 2 days before auto renew and then nuked my Amazon account. Dark patterns. Dark heart.
- dieselgate 3y ago
  That’s pretty bad. In order to reset password with the same company they’ve asked me to verify the last four digits of a credit card, never reset the pw and this was years ago.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > I decided it wasn't worth the cost for me so I went inside my settings to cancel. Their stipulations for cancelling the membership was "Come back two days before the account is set to auto-renew and cancel then." I'm not defending Amazon's sneaky tactics to trick people into signing up for prime. They got me too. But I didn't have any trouble cancelling it right away, and I went through it only a few months ago. Not saying you're wrong, though - they probably changed things since you had your experience.
  - LikesPwsh 3y ago
    You can cancel it right away, it's just intentionally obfuscated. The many layers of cancellation buttons with different layouts strongly suggest that they a/b test for maximum difficulty.
  - sergers 3y ago
    I have never had any issues canceling several times over the years. Twice was in response to lost packages between Amazon warehouses by amazon, on phone said I was disatisfied with prime and requested a full refund. - I was like 7 months into a year paid. They apologized and gave me a full refund of the 1 yr. Not even pro-rated... Full amount I signed up again a few weeks later
_HMCB_ 3y ago
I don’t find Prime hard to cancel but I do agree that certain patterns are crafty. Like when I go to buy a single Kindle book and it defaults to their subscription service (Kindle Unlimited). With 1-click purchase, it’s too easy to buy and not know.
- odysseus 3y ago
  The one-click purchase is a real problem. It's way too easy to accidentally one-tap subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited for example. You then instantly get charged $8.99 + tax and have to spend 15 minutes on the phone talking to 3 different Amazon agents in different countries trying to get a refund which when finally granted, will come 5 days later.
Prickle 3y ago
Related Article & thread from yesterday: > FTC sues Amazon over ‘deceptive’ Prime sign-up and cancellation process https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713 https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/ftc-sues-amazon-over-deceptive-prime-sign-up-and-cancellation-process.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/ftc-sues-amazon-over-decepti... The actual court document can be seen here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520.1.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...
KingOfCoders 3y ago
Cancelled Prime some years ago (customer since the very beginning). Now I need to find the (small) no-prime link every time when checking out - between many prime links. Amazon tells me 10 days delivery if I don't use prime. Then after ordering it becomes 8 days, then 5 days, then 3 days. (Main reason to cancel, I mostly got/get used items for full price)
- eclipxe 3y ago
  I’ve purchased thousands of items on Amazon over the last two decades. I maybe only one time got something that was used but marked as new. What kind of items are you getting that are used?
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    This might be Germany specific, I don't know. People seem to order stuff, use it, then send it back, and Amazon sells it as new (which it isn't - just like cars, you buy it and drive it, it's a used car). Used items: Electronics, DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, lenses (especially bad, has someone dropped them?), latest (this week) was a Gardena water splitter. I mostly by somewhere else if possible today (Bauhaus for garden stuff, Mediamarkt for electronics, cameras from my local store). It doesn't help that too many manufacturers don't seal their packaging.
    - a254613e 3y ago
      I have around 180 orders from Amazon in 2022 in Germany, I've ordered multiple DSLRs/Mirrorless cameras, lenses, all my Gardena stuff, and a ton of more things - never had one single item arrive that showed any signs of use, neither on the package nor on the item itself, and I've never heard anyone else say that they got used items. It's very weird that you've had so many used items delivered, but it's definitely not a common thing in Germany.
      - AmVess 3y ago
        I made the mistake of ordering a lens from Amazon. It arrived in a bubble envelope. I didn't even bother to see if it was functional. They did the same thing with 2 2tb nvme drives. Bubble envelope. Sent right back. And yet, they will sell me $12 wet wipes that are double boxed.
Waterluvian 3y ago
Any details available on the exact cancellation process? I recall mine being effortless. But that was Amazon Canada.
nimos 3y ago
Interesting, I complained to the California AG about not being able to cancel the auto renew in 2019. Got this great line from Amazon customer service: "Unfortunately, currently we don't have an option to turn off the prime membership. However you can turn off your prime membership in your Account (www.amazon.com/your-account). Just click "Manage Prime Membership" under "Settings," and click the "Do not continue" link." FWIW the "Do not continue" thing didn't seem to actually exist. I had to wait for the renewal to happen then cancel after.
gouggoug 3y ago
I have stopped paying for prime years ago. I regularly get a free 1 month trial that I accept and immediately cancel. When my trial expires, I wait until I get a new one. In the meantime I order without prime and still usually get my stuff in less than 2 days.
- andreygrehov 3y ago
  It's funny that people with Prime membership complain about the violation of the 2-day delivery promise, while those who have canceled their membership receive their packages within approximately 2 days, despite no longer being subscribers.
Daz1 3y ago
Love prime, has changed my life in Japan with easy access to just about anything delivered the next day, particularly things which are hard to come by here. Movie selection is good too.
- viknesh 3y ago
  In Japan pretty much any delivery arrives next day... the main delay is usually how long it takes the merchant to actually put a package in the mail.
- ProxCoques 3y ago
  Having lived in Japan, I doubt Prime has any delivery time avantage there. Next day (and sometimes same day if you live in a large city) is standard for pretty much all online fulfilment as far as I could tell.
whywhywhydude 3y ago
Isn’t customer obsession Amazon’s first leadership principal? I wonder how they justified such dark patterns?
- linooma_ 3y ago
  A customer who cancels isn't really a customer anymore so it follows that they wouldn't pay too much attention to their experiences.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
flagrant_taco 3y ago
Forget about being duped into free trials that aren't easily canceled. Think about what it actually means for a company to commit to getting you nearly anything, anywhere in 2 days. We may enjoy arguing about plastic straws and grocery bags but that's nothing compared to the resources needed to pull off prime shipping.
- allthecybers 3y ago
  This is a really good point and something that isn’t pointed out often enough. There is massive carbon footprint and people impact to deliver things that quickly. Even though being a Prime delivery driver is a job to work, the way DSPs are generally treated makes me glad I cancelled Prime.
- blitz_skull 3y ago
  What prime shipping? Nothing has been delivered in 2-days since the pandemic. I live within 2 hours of the FedEx international hub and I don’t get anything in 2 days. The only way they’re beating that is if they already have it in a warehouse near me which is very rare. That was the only reason I even had prime.
  - flagrant_taco 3y ago
    Yep that's totally fair, i haven't had prime for a few years now but have heard from others that 2-day isn't common outside of Seattle and other major cities. That doesn't change the promise though, if anything it would make sense for a company missing the 2-day promise to throw even more natural resources at the problem.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    I'm curious where you live. I'm in a suburb outside of Portland, OR. Nearly anything I order via Prime is here within 2 days. Often, if I place an order in the morning, I can get it next day, even. There are even some items I can get same day.
woodruffw 3y ago
I recently had a thought provoking conversation with a carpenter near me: he told me that Amazon (and other online storefronts) have completely warped consumers' expectations around furniture, from grossly overpaying for cheap pieces to normalizing a materially worse customer experience (paying for the "privilege" of expedited delivery, when any honest local store will do a same-day dropoff for free or a nominal fee). I haven't bought anything from Amazon for years, and my experience has been that this applies to nearly everything that I would have bought from them: buying it locally is cheaper, faster, with a better guarantee of quality, and with a human being (including often the manufacturer) on the other end.
- anonu 3y ago
  I'm not sure if your second paragraph is still about furniture. But Amazon is objectively better than a brick and mortar experience by many metrics. With Amazon I can find exactly what I need in a few clicks. To find one item in a big box store would take 10x more time. This is probably the one metric that matters. Saving time.
  - chimprich 3y ago
    This is true, which is the reason I use Amazon retail, but the experience is still dreadful: terrible, soul-crushing search experience, listings dominated by scams, cheap fakes, sponsored results, badly photoshopped images, paid reviews. And then when you get frustrated and try Googling for a product, you get direct adverts for products which are on Amazon, pages of paid-for recommendations that link back to Amazon... It's all so depressing.
  - subarctic 3y ago
    That's actually probably one of the best things about Amazon - if there's a type of product you want, you can probably find it pretty quickly on Amazon, and then if you're ok with crappy quality and spending too much for what you're getting and paying for prime or shipping, then you can save a lot of time by just ordering it on Amazon. The things that stop me from doing that are, 1) wanting to see / try on the product in real life before I buy, 2) the fear of getting ripped off by buying something crappy on amazon when I could have gotten a better deal overall somewhere else, 3) wanting to get it sooner and not wait for it to ship, and 4) not wanting to get prime because their shitty ui that funnels you into getting prime rubs me the wrong way, and because of the psychological factor that I know will influence me to get more stuff from amazon if i get prime. Also 5) returns aren't as easy as at a store and the return policy is inconsistent
account-5 3y ago
A friend of mine once found she'd somehow managed to sign up for Prime in America despite already being a Prime member in the UK. She only noticed 6 months later. Got her money back though. To this day she still can't work out how it happened.
- SapporoChris 3y ago
  I have a USA amazon account and a Japan amazon account. They are completely separate. So yes, it's easy to sign up for Prime multiple times if you use multiple accounts.
  - manderley 3y ago
    The accounts aren't completely separate, it's the same login on all sites and content is shared. But Prime subscriptions are separate.
    - SapporoChris 3y ago
      Thank you for the correction. I looked up on their FAQ for clarification. https://us.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201248840 https://us.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2... Change your Amazon Account Country Important: If you create a new Amazon account instead of transferring the existing account, purchases won't be shared between the accounts. You’ll have separate login credentials for each account.
aszantu 3y ago
I got prime a few times, just to get the free shipping, then cancelled right after. Now when I click prime, it just says something went wrong. Looks to me like u can get on a list.
- everdrive 3y ago
  I’d also like to see some legislation around this sort of consumer shadow-banning. If Amazon has decided I’m a terrible customer and they don’t want to offer me certain goods and services, I think I should be able to be informed about this fact. To be clear, it’s perfectly ok for them not to offer me the services. I just want to know the situation.
ProxCoques 3y ago
Tangentially related: https://scribe.rip/view-a-sku-32721d623aee https://scribe.rip/view-a-sku-32721d623aee "... what if buying local was as easy as shopping at Amazon? What if you could buy local while shopping on Amazon?"
Netcob 3y ago
Oh, I found the user story: As a user, I want to be able to cancel my Prime membership. As a company, we don't want that.
- subarctic 3y ago
  I wonder if it's justified as "customers don't know what they want"
mcintyre1994 3y ago
I was actually pleasantly surprised by Prime cancellation recently. I bought a gift for a friend on Amazon US (I’m based in the UK), and accepted the trial of Prime to get the shipping free. I forgot to cancel it until they charged me. But a few days after the charge when I cancelled they had an option to be refunded for the month I’d accidentally paid for, which was a pleasant surprise.
andy_ppp 3y ago
There needs to be better regulations around subscriptions. If you don’t use a subscription for 3 months you should be offered an unsubscribe link in your email that isn’t some convoluted set of dark patterns and often phone calls!
jononomo 3y ago
I remember that I thought I had cancelled Amazon Prime a year or two ago only to discover that I apparently hadn't.
nologic01 3y ago
A smaller entity would not survive the reputational damage, Amazon will just shrug, "manage the damage" and move on. This is what letting corporate entities become too big does to market discipline: it annihilates it.
- Gareth321 3y ago
  I am becoming increasingly disappointed by the lack of action on antitrust. It's abundantly clear to everyone that these mega-corporations wield sufficient power to distort their respective markets. The direct and indirect costs to consumers must be approaching unfathomable amounts.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  What bothers me is that consumers don't care either. Talk to any given yuppie and they'll shit all over amazon; from it's dark patterns, to Chinese counterfeit goods, to useless gamed rating system, to expensive membership with worsening benefits, to mountains cheap low quality products, to workers rights abuses. But walk by their doorstep on any given day and there are 4 prime boxes sitting there. Seriously guys, give that shit up. I'm two years clean and has had no impact on my life.
  - shepherdjerred 3y ago
    Where do you buy things from now? Is there something similar to Amazon that's better?
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      Any other website. Most offer free shipping now, often even 2 day shipping. I'll also buy online and pickup in store or simply just go to the store. People just instinctually go to amazon now and don't even check other sources. Amazon isn't even cheaper anymore in many cases too.
pimpampum 3y ago
Me too, I signed up "for free" to get faster a package that ended up coming later than originally, went ahead to forget about it and caught it while I had been charged 3 months.
lastangryman 3y ago
I actually feel embarrassed for Amazon when I'm trying to checkout and can see all the deceptive tricks they implement to make you sign up. This is one of the richest companies in the world acting like dodgy internet scammers. Good to see this is finally catching up with them in some way.
- neogodless 3y ago
  What might be more sad is that either it will catch up to them and affect their profits, in which case, they will likely double down and make it worse, or it will not affect their profits (or they won't notice) and... they'll stick with it (and maybe double down for good measure). It's very unlikely that they'll "see the light" and fix the terrible user experience.
jcpham2 3y ago
I can successfully say I never enrolled in Prime. I always thought the dark patterns around it were deceptive and deceitful - unfortunately they've gotten away with it for so long and bilked so many people and padded their forward accounting statements for so long with this revenue that I doubt any fine from the FTC has any real teeth to stop them from doing it again.
Auguste 3y ago
Amazon Prime is definitely hard to cancel, but I had a pleasant customer support experience at least. A few years ago I came to realise I had left my monthly Prime subscription active for a whole year when I thought I had cancelled it. Once I realised, I cancelled it and asked Amazon support if I could possibly get a refund; they granted it the next day after confirming I hadn't bought anything or watched Prime Video in that time. I'm very careful to make sure I cancel Prime when I'm done with it now. It bothers me that they don't send an email receipt or anything every time you're billed.
carpenecopinum 3y ago
I have to admit that those dark patterns on Amazon already saved me a good amount of money. For every order, I have to confirm that I don't want Prime (an estimated) 3 times now. Usually between the second and third click I'm reminded that I should shop around and to look for a better deal elsewhere (and usually there is one). In that sense, thanks for your greed, Jeff.
patrickwalton 3y ago
I saw this on my account actually! One day I was a family user on my brother's plan, the next I was a prime subscriber without my consent, using my payment method on file. I reached out to class action lawyers but no one responded. Really good to see the FTC taking action.
collegeburner 3y ago
"To cancel Prime, consumers had to... locate the "manage membership" page and press a button labeled "End Membership"... then move through multiple steps." the horror! pressing an "end membership button"? moving through multiple steps?? i've cancelled a prime membership before. it's not that bad. why are we making consumer protection into a joke with this nonsense. feels like FTC is looking for any chance to go after a bigcorp that plays well in news headlines.
efitz 3y ago
I have written my congressman and my state representative multiple times in two states, asking them to sponsor a bill to address this. The basic idea I have is that it should be illegal for an unsubscribe or cancellation process to take more time or effort or a different communication channel than its subscription process, and that the process to cancel must be easily discoverable. The fine would be way in excess of the value of a typical subscription, eg maybe $1000 or so per occurrence. This would also be an individual cause of action, meaning that, if you encountered this, you could take them to small claims court. So far I have gotten a lot of positive noises but no action.
raisedbyninjas 3y ago
Does anybody have a good alternative to Amazon? I'm lazy and would like an online shop that sells everything under the sun, but is more trustworthy and with fewer moral failings.
fauigerzigerk 3y ago
So I just cancelled my Prime membership to see how hard it is, and because cancelling subscriptions before they expire is a good idea anyway. I often get better offers just by doing this. I will very likely re-subscribe though. Here's what I did: 1) Select "Your Prime Membership" from the "Account & Lists" menu on the Amazon homepage. It's not hard to find and not in a surprising place. 2) At the top of that page is a menu titled "Manage Membership - update cancel and more". The dropdown contains a link saying "End Membership". They also warn right there "By ending your membership you will lose access to your Prime benefits." without telling me that I'm not actually going to lose any benefits until the end of the membership period. That's a very popular dark pattern. They clearly want me to wait until the last moment and then forget to cancel. On the other hand, they do send a reminder. 3) Clicking "End Membership" brings me to a page listing all my Prime benefits with a big button at the top saying "Use your benefits today". At the bottom of the page are three buttons, "Keep membership", "See More Plans" and "Continue to cancel". Continuing to cancel... 4) Now I'm on a page with a big fat headline saying "Please confirm your Prime membership cancellation" and a prominently highlighted button saying "End on 15 July 2023" next to a gray button saying "Keep Membership". Now they're finally letting me know when my membership benefits will end. Clicking this button actually cancels the membership. So this is one unnecessary step and one annoying dark pattern (plus a few more subtle ones). It's not egregious. I would say it's slightly better than average.
mrangle 3y ago
The FTC needs to look into Amazon's practice of raising the price of goods the rough amount, for Prime members, which it ostensibly is supposed to be saving them on shipping. More and more it is looking like Prime isn't much more than a streaming subscription and a single discount day. Unless there is some niche benefit that a relatively rare person is specifically keyed into.
RecycledEle 3y ago
OK, FTC. Now do WalMart's "free" delivery that they never tell you demands a tip for every delivery.

299 points by testrun 3y ago

As a UK-based Amazon customer, these dark patterns are getting out of control. They keep swapping interfaces every few days, and they are becoming increasingly complex. Now you have to de-select "use the remaining balance in my gift cards to pay for prime" every time you checkout. The you have to select a non-obvious button to not get fast delivery (otherwise enable prime). You then have to go through all of the orders in the checkout and ensure that the "free" option is selected. That, plus they keep pushing this subscription service for repeat purchases, meaning that can slowly creep the prices of everything up and not notify you. They also now display prices as if you are subscribed, not the actual one-off purchase.

valianteffort 3y ago

[flagged]

cyanydeez 3y ago
....(citation needed)
nl 3y ago
> I was almost convinced they weren't looting the treasury blind. What does this even mean?
- technothrasher 3y ago
  It's a standard right-wing talking point. It translates to: "the national debt is increasing and it is because of Biden and the Democrats with their unchecked spending." (Not that I agree with the above. I'm just translating what "looting the treasury" was supposed to mean in the post.)
  - blooalien 3y ago
    > It translates to: "the national debt is increasing and it is because of Biden and the Democrats with their unchecked spending." When the actual reality is that the vast majority of our "high-level" politicians these days (regardless of party) are absolutely guilty as sin of that very same "unchecked spending", where the only real difference is what personal or corporate agenda they choose to spend it on (at least that portion of it which escapes their own corrupt wallets, where a lot of it surely lands).
    - salad-tycoon 3y ago
      One of the things that bugs me most is that somehow “They” managed to squash the whole “we are the 99%” thing and replace it with “red hates blue and blue hates red, fight to the death you plebs.” Vitriol, save it for your masters. #wereallinthistogether or some such nonsense, right?

boomboomsubban 3y ago

Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713

slurpyb 3y ago

Last time i used Amazon, they dynamically altered the shipping costs to be just above the cost of a month of prime (which would give me free shipping). Whether it was because I was once a Prime member or not, it felt so slimey.

whatever1 3y ago
Or maybe the typical delivery cost is close to $10? USPS Retail Ground® is $9.
- jeromegv 3y ago
  Rates amazon is getting are nowhere near the retail price.
  - viknesh 3y ago
    I'd guess that Amazon would pay not more than $5 if the address is in an urban or suburban area for them to have UPS ship the same package, and definitely less if they self-fulfill. Anecdotally I've heard that Amazon had UPS discounts that employees could use that gave almost half off.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - whatever1 3y ago
      The real question is why to pay $5 for a customer you likely will not see again ? If the item is expensive enough probably you can offset the cost, but if their basket is worth $10, it makes no sense to subsidize their $5 shipping. I am thinking of it from the perspective of an EBay seller.

selcuka 3y ago

Well, I tried it after reading the article, and currently it is very intuitive to cancel your Prime membership: - Clicked the "Hello, Your Account & Lists" button on the home page - Clicked the "Prime" button - There is a big link that says "Update, cancel, and more..." there The article says that they changed the UI in April. Maybe it was worse before.

majormajor 3y ago
And then how many more steps? (I don't want to cancel right now so I didn't go all the way through the flow, but saw at least two "are you sure" prompts in a row...)
- selcuka 3y ago
  No idea, but at least it is easy to find it now. How many clicks it actually takes is largely irrelevant when we probably click thousands of times for much less trivial things every day.
Prickle 3y ago
> The lawsuit said that under substantial pressure from the FTC, Amazon changed its cancellation process in April but that "violations are ongoing" and that it still "requires five clicks on desktop and six on mobile for consumers to cancel from Amazon.com." They clearly state here, that it was significantly worse before. The suit can be seen here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520.1.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32... The lawsuit states: 114: "The Iliad Flow required consumers intending to cancel to navigate a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option cancellation process. In contrast, customers could enroll in Prime with one or two clicks." https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-ftc-probe-customer-complaints-sign-ups-internal-documents-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-ftc-probe-custo... https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-project-iliad-juiciest-highlights-ftc-prime-lawsuit-2023-6?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-project-iliad-juicies... > Amazon intentionally drew out the process of canceling a Prime membership under a project code-named "Iliad," according to internal documents obtained by Insider. Related stuff from the EU: > Amazon changed its process for canceling Prime subscriptions last summer after pressure from the European Commission and national consumer watchdogs. The company introduced a simplified two-click process. Article below has pictures from a previous EU case in 2022. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/5/23195019/amazon-prime-cancellation-europe-european-union-dark-patterns https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/5/23195019/amazon-prime-canc...

noman-land 3y ago

Amazon's dark patterns around cancelling Prime membership left such a disgusting taste in my mouth that I swore the company off. Nasty. This was some years ago but I decided it wasn't worth the cost for me so I went inside my settings to cancel. Their stipulations for cancelling the membership were "Come back 2 days before the account is set to auto-renew and cancel then." Excuse me? That was in like 6 months. Can't remove the credit card. Can't ask them to just stop auto charging. I set about 40 calendar reminders and cancelled at 12:01am 2 days before auto renew and then nuked my Amazon account. Dark patterns. Dark heart.

dieselgate 3y ago
That’s pretty bad. In order to reset password with the same company they’ve asked me to verify the last four digits of a credit card, never reset the pw and this was years ago.
nordsieck 3y ago
> I decided it wasn't worth the cost for me so I went inside my settings to cancel. Their stipulations for cancelling the membership was "Come back two days before the account is set to auto-renew and cancel then." I'm not defending Amazon's sneaky tactics to trick people into signing up for prime. They got me too. But I didn't have any trouble cancelling it right away, and I went through it only a few months ago. Not saying you're wrong, though - they probably changed things since you had your experience.
- LikesPwsh 3y ago
  You can cancel it right away, it's just intentionally obfuscated. The many layers of cancellation buttons with different layouts strongly suggest that they a/b test for maximum difficulty.
- sergers 3y ago
  I have never had any issues canceling several times over the years. Twice was in response to lost packages between Amazon warehouses by amazon, on phone said I was disatisfied with prime and requested a full refund. - I was like 7 months into a year paid. They apologized and gave me a full refund of the 1 yr. Not even pro-rated... Full amount I signed up again a few weeks later

_HMCB_ 3y ago

I don’t find Prime hard to cancel but I do agree that certain patterns are crafty. Like when I go to buy a single Kindle book and it defaults to their subscription service (Kindle Unlimited). With 1-click purchase, it’s too easy to buy and not know.

odysseus 3y ago
The one-click purchase is a real problem. It's way too easy to accidentally one-tap subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited for example. You then instantly get charged $8.99 + tax and have to spend 15 minutes on the phone talking to 3 different Amazon agents in different countries trying to get a refund which when finally granted, will come 5 days later.

Prickle 3y ago

Related Article & thread from yesterday: > FTC sues Amazon over ‘deceptive’ Prime sign-up and cancellation process https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713 https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/ftc-sues-amazon-over-deceptive-prime-sign-up-and-cancellation-process.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/ftc-sues-amazon-over-decepti... The actual court document can be seen here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520/gov.uscourts.wawd.323520.1.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...

KingOfCoders 3y ago

Cancelled Prime some years ago (customer since the very beginning). Now I need to find the (small) no-prime link every time when checking out - between many prime links. Amazon tells me 10 days delivery if I don't use prime. Then after ordering it becomes 8 days, then 5 days, then 3 days. (Main reason to cancel, I mostly got/get used items for full price)

eclipxe 3y ago
I’ve purchased thousands of items on Amazon over the last two decades. I maybe only one time got something that was used but marked as new. What kind of items are you getting that are used?
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  This might be Germany specific, I don't know. People seem to order stuff, use it, then send it back, and Amazon sells it as new (which it isn't - just like cars, you buy it and drive it, it's a used car). Used items: Electronics, DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, lenses (especially bad, has someone dropped them?), latest (this week) was a Gardena water splitter. I mostly by somewhere else if possible today (Bauhaus for garden stuff, Mediamarkt for electronics, cameras from my local store). It doesn't help that too many manufacturers don't seal their packaging.
  - a254613e 3y ago
    I have around 180 orders from Amazon in 2022 in Germany, I've ordered multiple DSLRs/Mirrorless cameras, lenses, all my Gardena stuff, and a ton of more things - never had one single item arrive that showed any signs of use, neither on the package nor on the item itself, and I've never heard anyone else say that they got used items. It's very weird that you've had so many used items delivered, but it's definitely not a common thing in Germany.
    - AmVess 3y ago
      I made the mistake of ordering a lens from Amazon. It arrived in a bubble envelope. I didn't even bother to see if it was functional. They did the same thing with 2 2tb nvme drives. Bubble envelope. Sent right back. And yet, they will sell me $12 wet wipes that are double boxed.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Any details available on the exact cancellation process? I recall mine being effortless. But that was Amazon Canada.

nimos 3y ago

Interesting, I complained to the California AG about not being able to cancel the auto renew in 2019. Got this great line from Amazon customer service: "Unfortunately, currently we don't have an option to turn off the prime membership. However you can turn off your prime membership in your Account (www.amazon.com/your-account). Just click "Manage Prime Membership" under "Settings," and click the "Do not continue" link." FWIW the "Do not continue" thing didn't seem to actually exist. I had to wait for the renewal to happen then cancel after.

gouggoug 3y ago

I have stopped paying for prime years ago. I regularly get a free 1 month trial that I accept and immediately cancel. When my trial expires, I wait until I get a new one. In the meantime I order without prime and still usually get my stuff in less than 2 days.

andreygrehov 3y ago
It's funny that people with Prime membership complain about the violation of the 2-day delivery promise, while those who have canceled their membership receive their packages within approximately 2 days, despite no longer being subscribers.

Daz1 3y ago

Love prime, has changed my life in Japan with easy access to just about anything delivered the next day, particularly things which are hard to come by here. Movie selection is good too.

viknesh 3y ago
In Japan pretty much any delivery arrives next day... the main delay is usually how long it takes the merchant to actually put a package in the mail.
ProxCoques 3y ago
Having lived in Japan, I doubt Prime has any delivery time avantage there. Next day (and sometimes same day if you live in a large city) is standard for pretty much all online fulfilment as far as I could tell.

whywhywhydude 3y ago

Isn’t customer obsession Amazon’s first leadership principal? I wonder how they justified such dark patterns?

linooma_ 3y ago
A customer who cancels isn't really a customer anymore so it follows that they wouldn't pay too much attention to their experiences.
deleted 3y ago
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flagrant_taco 3y ago

Forget about being duped into free trials that aren't easily canceled. Think about what it actually means for a company to commit to getting you nearly anything, anywhere in 2 days. We may enjoy arguing about plastic straws and grocery bags but that's nothing compared to the resources needed to pull off prime shipping.

allthecybers 3y ago
This is a really good point and something that isn’t pointed out often enough. There is massive carbon footprint and people impact to deliver things that quickly. Even though being a Prime delivery driver is a job to work, the way DSPs are generally treated makes me glad I cancelled Prime.
blitz_skull 3y ago
What prime shipping? Nothing has been delivered in 2-days since the pandemic. I live within 2 hours of the FedEx international hub and I don’t get anything in 2 days. The only way they’re beating that is if they already have it in a warehouse near me which is very rare. That was the only reason I even had prime.
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  Yep that's totally fair, i haven't had prime for a few years now but have heard from others that 2-day isn't common outside of Seattle and other major cities. That doesn't change the promise though, if anything it would make sense for a company missing the 2-day promise to throw even more natural resources at the problem.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  I'm curious where you live. I'm in a suburb outside of Portland, OR. Nearly anything I order via Prime is here within 2 days. Often, if I place an order in the morning, I can get it next day, even. There are even some items I can get same day.

woodruffw 3y ago

I recently had a thought provoking conversation with a carpenter near me: he told me that Amazon (and other online storefronts) have completely warped consumers' expectations around furniture, from grossly overpaying for cheap pieces to normalizing a materially worse customer experience (paying for the "privilege" of expedited delivery, when any honest local store will do a same-day dropoff for free or a nominal fee). I haven't bought anything from Amazon for years, and my experience has been that this applies to nearly everything that I would have bought from them: buying it locally is cheaper, faster, with a better guarantee of quality, and with a human being (including often the manufacturer) on the other end.

anonu 3y ago
I'm not sure if your second paragraph is still about furniture. But Amazon is objectively better than a brick and mortar experience by many metrics. With Amazon I can find exactly what I need in a few clicks. To find one item in a big box store would take 10x more time. This is probably the one metric that matters. Saving time.
- chimprich 3y ago
  This is true, which is the reason I use Amazon retail, but the experience is still dreadful: terrible, soul-crushing search experience, listings dominated by scams, cheap fakes, sponsored results, badly photoshopped images, paid reviews. And then when you get frustrated and try Googling for a product, you get direct adverts for products which are on Amazon, pages of paid-for recommendations that link back to Amazon... It's all so depressing.
- subarctic 3y ago
  That's actually probably one of the best things about Amazon - if there's a type of product you want, you can probably find it pretty quickly on Amazon, and then if you're ok with crappy quality and spending too much for what you're getting and paying for prime or shipping, then you can save a lot of time by just ordering it on Amazon. The things that stop me from doing that are, 1) wanting to see / try on the product in real life before I buy, 2) the fear of getting ripped off by buying something crappy on amazon when I could have gotten a better deal overall somewhere else, 3) wanting to get it sooner and not wait for it to ship, and 4) not wanting to get prime because their shitty ui that funnels you into getting prime rubs me the wrong way, and because of the psychological factor that I know will influence me to get more stuff from amazon if i get prime. Also 5) returns aren't as easy as at a store and the return policy is inconsistent

account-5 3y ago

A friend of mine once found she'd somehow managed to sign up for Prime in America despite already being a Prime member in the UK. She only noticed 6 months later. Got her money back though. To this day she still can't work out how it happened.

SapporoChris 3y ago
I have a USA amazon account and a Japan amazon account. They are completely separate. So yes, it's easy to sign up for Prime multiple times if you use multiple accounts.
- manderley 3y ago
  The accounts aren't completely separate, it's the same login on all sites and content is shared. But Prime subscriptions are separate.
  - SapporoChris 3y ago
    Thank you for the correction. I looked up on their FAQ for clarification. https://us.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201248840 https://us.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2... Change your Amazon Account Country Important: If you create a new Amazon account instead of transferring the existing account, purchases won't be shared between the accounts. You’ll have separate login credentials for each account.

aszantu 3y ago

I got prime a few times, just to get the free shipping, then cancelled right after. Now when I click prime, it just says something went wrong. Looks to me like u can get on a list.

everdrive 3y ago
I’d also like to see some legislation around this sort of consumer shadow-banning. If Amazon has decided I’m a terrible customer and they don’t want to offer me certain goods and services, I think I should be able to be informed about this fact. To be clear, it’s perfectly ok for them not to offer me the services. I just want to know the situation.

ProxCoques 3y ago

Tangentially related: https://scribe.rip/view-a-sku-32721d623aee https://scribe.rip/view-a-sku-32721d623aee "... what if buying local was as easy as shopping at Amazon? What if you could buy local while shopping on Amazon?"

Netcob 3y ago

Oh, I found the user story: As a user, I want to be able to cancel my Prime membership. As a company, we don't want that.

subarctic 3y ago
I wonder if it's justified as "customers don't know what they want"

mcintyre1994 3y ago

I was actually pleasantly surprised by Prime cancellation recently. I bought a gift for a friend on Amazon US (I’m based in the UK), and accepted the trial of Prime to get the shipping free. I forgot to cancel it until they charged me. But a few days after the charge when I cancelled they had an option to be refunded for the month I’d accidentally paid for, which was a pleasant surprise.

andy_ppp 3y ago

There needs to be better regulations around subscriptions. If you don’t use a subscription for 3 months you should be offered an unsubscribe link in your email that isn’t some convoluted set of dark patterns and often phone calls!

jononomo 3y ago

I remember that I thought I had cancelled Amazon Prime a year or two ago only to discover that I apparently hadn't.

nologic01 3y ago

A smaller entity would not survive the reputational damage, Amazon will just shrug, "manage the damage" and move on. This is what letting corporate entities become too big does to market discipline: it annihilates it.

Gareth321 3y ago
I am becoming increasingly disappointed by the lack of action on antitrust. It's abundantly clear to everyone that these mega-corporations wield sufficient power to distort their respective markets. The direct and indirect costs to consumers must be approaching unfathomable amounts.
Workaccount2 3y ago
What bothers me is that consumers don't care either. Talk to any given yuppie and they'll shit all over amazon; from it's dark patterns, to Chinese counterfeit goods, to useless gamed rating system, to expensive membership with worsening benefits, to mountains cheap low quality products, to workers rights abuses. But walk by their doorstep on any given day and there are 4 prime boxes sitting there. Seriously guys, give that shit up. I'm two years clean and has had no impact on my life.
- shepherdjerred 3y ago
  Where do you buy things from now? Is there something similar to Amazon that's better?
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    Any other website. Most offer free shipping now, often even 2 day shipping. I'll also buy online and pickup in store or simply just go to the store. People just instinctually go to amazon now and don't even check other sources. Amazon isn't even cheaper anymore in many cases too.

pimpampum 3y ago

Me too, I signed up "for free" to get faster a package that ended up coming later than originally, went ahead to forget about it and caught it while I had been charged 3 months.

lastangryman 3y ago

I actually feel embarrassed for Amazon when I'm trying to checkout and can see all the deceptive tricks they implement to make you sign up. This is one of the richest companies in the world acting like dodgy internet scammers. Good to see this is finally catching up with them in some way.

neogodless 3y ago
What might be more sad is that either it will catch up to them and affect their profits, in which case, they will likely double down and make it worse, or it will not affect their profits (or they won't notice) and... they'll stick with it (and maybe double down for good measure). It's very unlikely that they'll "see the light" and fix the terrible user experience.

jcpham2 3y ago

I can successfully say I never enrolled in Prime. I always thought the dark patterns around it were deceptive and deceitful - unfortunately they've gotten away with it for so long and bilked so many people and padded their forward accounting statements for so long with this revenue that I doubt any fine from the FTC has any real teeth to stop them from doing it again.

Auguste 3y ago

Amazon Prime is definitely hard to cancel, but I had a pleasant customer support experience at least. A few years ago I came to realise I had left my monthly Prime subscription active for a whole year when I thought I had cancelled it. Once I realised, I cancelled it and asked Amazon support if I could possibly get a refund; they granted it the next day after confirming I hadn't bought anything or watched Prime Video in that time. I'm very careful to make sure I cancel Prime when I'm done with it now. It bothers me that they don't send an email receipt or anything every time you're billed.

carpenecopinum 3y ago

I have to admit that those dark patterns on Amazon already saved me a good amount of money. For every order, I have to confirm that I don't want Prime (an estimated) 3 times now. Usually between the second and third click I'm reminded that I should shop around and to look for a better deal elsewhere (and usually there is one). In that sense, thanks for your greed, Jeff.

patrickwalton 3y ago

I saw this on my account actually! One day I was a family user on my brother's plan, the next I was a prime subscriber without my consent, using my payment method on file. I reached out to class action lawyers but no one responded. Really good to see the FTC taking action.

collegeburner 3y ago

"To cancel Prime, consumers had to... locate the "manage membership" page and press a button labeled "End Membership"... then move through multiple steps." the horror! pressing an "end membership button"? moving through multiple steps?? i've cancelled a prime membership before. it's not that bad. why are we making consumer protection into a joke with this nonsense. feels like FTC is looking for any chance to go after a bigcorp that plays well in news headlines.

efitz 3y ago

I have written my congressman and my state representative multiple times in two states, asking them to sponsor a bill to address this. The basic idea I have is that it should be illegal for an unsubscribe or cancellation process to take more time or effort or a different communication channel than its subscription process, and that the process to cancel must be easily discoverable. The fine would be way in excess of the value of a typical subscription, eg maybe $1000 or so per occurrence. This would also be an individual cause of action, meaning that, if you encountered this, you could take them to small claims court. So far I have gotten a lot of positive noises but no action.

raisedbyninjas 3y ago

Does anybody have a good alternative to Amazon? I'm lazy and would like an online shop that sells everything under the sun, but is more trustworthy and with fewer moral failings.

fauigerzigerk 3y ago

So I just cancelled my Prime membership to see how hard it is, and because cancelling subscriptions before they expire is a good idea anyway. I often get better offers just by doing this. I will very likely re-subscribe though. Here's what I did: 1) Select "Your Prime Membership" from the "Account & Lists" menu on the Amazon homepage. It's not hard to find and not in a surprising place. 2) At the top of that page is a menu titled "Manage Membership - update cancel and more". The dropdown contains a link saying "End Membership". They also warn right there "By ending your membership you will lose access to your Prime benefits." without telling me that I'm not actually going to lose any benefits until the end of the membership period. That's a very popular dark pattern. They clearly want me to wait until the last moment and then forget to cancel. On the other hand, they do send a reminder. 3) Clicking "End Membership" brings me to a page listing all my Prime benefits with a big button at the top saying "Use your benefits today". At the bottom of the page are three buttons, "Keep membership", "See More Plans" and "Continue to cancel". Continuing to cancel... 4) Now I'm on a page with a big fat headline saying "Please confirm your Prime membership cancellation" and a prominently highlighted button saying "End on 15 July 2023" next to a gray button saying "Keep Membership". Now they're finally letting me know when my membership benefits will end. Clicking this button actually cancels the membership. So this is one unnecessary step and one annoying dark pattern (plus a few more subtle ones). It's not egregious. I would say it's slightly better than average.

mrangle 3y ago

The FTC needs to look into Amazon's practice of raising the price of goods the rough amount, for Prime members, which it ostensibly is supposed to be saving them on shipping. More and more it is looking like Prime isn't much more than a streaming subscription and a single discount day. Unless there is some niche benefit that a relatively rare person is specifically keyed into.

RecycledEle 3y ago

OK, FTC. Now do WalMart's "free" delivery that they never tell you demands a tip for every delivery.